The present invention can be applied in the technical sector of remote control systems, and more specifically in geospatial location-based control systems of electrical and/or electronic devices.
Deploying networks of electrical or electronic devices without a known geospatial location is very common today. Primarily in ample physical settings, such as commercial premises, offices, or warehouses, these networks of electrical or electronic devices are often created to provide certain services to relevant parts of the physical space in a more or less homogenous manner, such as for example the networks of lighting devices or sound devices, which, deployed in higher or lower areas, homogenously distribute light and sound in the physical space of surface areas, such as department stores, for example. Another example is the deployment of WiFi access points, which are homogenously distributed to provide coverage in physical spaces such as shopping malls or airports, for example.
The distribution of any of these or other electrical or electronic devices in physical spaces of a certain size involves the need to perform different tasks with them such as: locating the devices so they are accessible in order to utilize them; locating them to perform maintenance tasks; acting on them remotely for activation, deactivation, modification of their performance, etc.
On the other hand, these large spaces usually require a number of access points for accessing the power supply grid, so a number of sockets are also distributed for connecting electrical devices, such that it is more or less possible to connect electrical equipment, such as a vacuum cleaner or a mobile telephone charger, for example, in any part of the physical space.
Problems arise first with regard to the location of the electrical or electronic devices, since the state of the art offers barely any alternative solutions besides visual signaling. It is therefore common to install signs in the vicinity of the electrical or electronic device at hand (WiFi area indicator, socket area indicator for charging mobile phones at an airport, etc.). On other occasions, both paper maps and digital maps are used and made available to the users of the space (maps in an airport where are indicated the mobile telephone charging areas or areas with WiFi coverage) or made available only to the maintenance personnel for these networks of devices, in order to make it easier to locate said devices. What is even more surprising is that there are other solutions that incorporate lighting mechanisms above the devices themselves to help visually detect them (for example, lighting up the contour of a socket).
The obvious limitation of having to use visual mechanisms for locating the devices is that the presence of said devices being detected by all the users of the space may not always be of interest. For example, sockets in certain spaces in airports are usually hidden to prevent travelers from connecting devices that may compromise the stability of the electrical system in the event of a short-circuit, but they are there in any case in order to allow authorized personnel to utilize them for previously approved uses, such as for cleaning actions or for plugging in an information board.
On the other hand, the devices have occasionally been moved without having updated the maps indicating their location; for example, in the case of WiFi access points, this is somewhat common since a different physical location can considerably improve the their coverage. Given that WiFi access points are not particularly innocuous as regards their visual aspect, architects or designers usually prefer to physically locate them in spaces that cannot be seen by the users of the space, such as in false ceilings or false floors. The combination of both greatly hinders the location of these access points for maintenance tasks, and there are no known efficient mechanisms for locating them save opening up ceilings or floors.
Secondly, remotely acting on said electrical or electronic devices is also a drawback for the state of the art. In spaces such as department stores, physical spaces usually delimit different value propositions displayed for the public and the content often varies according to various interests either because new products are introduced or because needs change depending on the time of year, weather conditions, or trends or interest shown by customers or other reasons. Given that each product or service area has a different priority and level of interest, the corresponding electrical or electronic devices must enable being set to regulate, for example, the intensity of lighting devices by specific areas, for each product line, for service areas, shop window displays, or even completely shut off some areas to attract attention to others. However, so as to enable regulating the light intensity by areas, systems existing in the state of the art only propose creating light circuits with previously established regulation mechanisms, usually wiring and sometimes by means of wireless systems which allow regulating the light intensity of predetermined groups of lighting devices by means of switches. The huge drawback of these systems is that they require creating beforehand the circuits clustering lights together in a specific manner, and therefore do not provide the flexibility required to cluster or decluster said circuits in an easy and dynamic manner. Furthermore, these solutions also require the operator to be entirely familiar with the installation in order to know which switches need to be activated at all times in order to regulate a specific group of lights, which makes it tremendously difficult to be able to act remotely on the electrical or electronic devices with the desired speed.
Thirdly, with the recent emergence of BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) technology, public spaces and shops are deploying small devices, called beacons or BLE emitting devices which help other mobile devices equipped with Bluetooth and an application software particularly developed for the purpose of very precisely detecting their location in the space. As a result of this precise location in the space, the application can provide specific location-based information to the users of the application, such as sales, recommendations, information about how to get to another location, etc. The problem is finding the actual beacons when their batteries need to be replaced or any change in configuration has to be done because even though there are beacons based on devices connected to the power grid, autonomous beacons powered by an internal battery are more common and can be deployed in shopping areas without having to do any sort of electrical installation. The drawback of said designs is the limited service life of the batteries, which means that operators of the networks of beacons have to replace them every so often and particularly check the state of the batteries on a regular basis so that the functionality of the users of the applications in said physical spaces is not affected.
Given that the object of the deployment of beacons in public spaces or shopping areas is to unequivocally indicate location, it is essential that said beacons are not moved and that the operators of the network of beacons know exactly where they are located at all times so as to enable linking each physical place with the corresponding information and not make a mistake showing unsuitable messages. For the same reasons, it is essential to replace the battery when it is close to the end of its service life, and to that end it is necessary to know which beacons have a battery that is close to the end of its service life and exactly where there are located.
The state of the art offers solutions for solving this need to locate the beacons by means of beacon detection mobile applications (scanning applications) which allow checking for their actual location by means of scanning the public space with the mobile device, but they require human intervention and only allow assuring that the beacons were in a given location at the time the check was run, not continuously. On the other hand, given that the beacons must be hidden from the public to prevent theft or vandalism, locating them with scanning applications may be difficult since the beacons do not reveal their position by means of any visible signal nor do they emit any audible signal when the search is being conducted, but no matter how precise the locating may be, if the beacon is not visible there is always certain degree of uncertainty.
According to the foregoing, the solutions known up until now through the state of the art have not offered any flexible and completely autonomous solution for the control of electrical or electronic devices, primarily luminous devices, which can adapt to the changing needs of users without a complex prior step of designing physical circuits and a subsequent step of training maintenance personnel for using suitable switches. As a result, any method or system making progress in the control of said electrical or electronic devices, primarily lighting devices, would be received in the state of the art as a valuable contribution.